The following Sunday night found them sitting at Blasphemy with Master Quinton, Master Kyler, and Mia. All of them had just finished scenes and, hungry, they’d ordered appetizers and taken over the small grouping of couches and chairs secluded in a hallway at the back of what had once been the side aisle of the church.
Halfway through their little impromptu dinner, Kenna touched his knee and smiled at him. “Master Griffin, may I please be excused to get another drink?”
He peered at her, smiling, and then he leaned in and kissed her. “What a good girl you are,” he whispered. They weren’t in a scene, so she didn’t need his permission, and he’d never been a stickler for D/s protocol outside of scenes anyway. But he fucking loved that she showed him the respect to ask. “Of course, baby. Would you please grab me another?” He nodded to his nearly empty beer glass.
“Yes, Sir.”
“Mia,” Master Kyler said. “Why don’t you go with Kenna? I could use a refill, too. Why don’t we get a pitcher?” His gaze ran over the other men.
“I’m down for that,” Master Quinton said, and Griffin nodded. “Thanks, ladies.”
Mia kissed Kyler on the cheek, and then the women departed.
Quinton laughed. “Dude, that wasn’t subtle at all.” He smirked at Kyler, who flipped him off.
“How the hell else were we going to get five minutes alone with Griffin?” he asked, sarcasm plain in his tone. “He hasn’t come up for air in a week.”
“Shut up, asshole,” Griffin said, chuckling. He didn’t mind being teased for the time he’d spent with Kenna. He didn’t mind it at all. Anyway, of anybody, these two knew what Kenna had once meant to him, and he had been wanting to talk to them. Because he didn’t want to fuck things up.
“So what’s going on, G?” Quinton asked. “Have you two worked everything out, from before?”
“Mostly, I think so,” he said, looking from Quinton’s unusually serious expression to Kyler’s observing blue eyes.
“What’s ‘mostly’ mean?” Kyler asked.
Griffin shrugged. “She wants to take it slow. And after what happened between us before, I can’t really blame her for that. And she’s dealing with other issues, too. Her arm?” He glanced at each of his friends in turn. This was the thing he’d most been needing a sound board for. “She lost it in fucking Afghanistan. IED explosion. When I couldn’t find her five years ago, that’s what happened—she’d enlisted in the Marines and gone off to war a few months later.”
“Fuck, really?” Quinton asked, wiping his hands on a napkin. “Damn. I’m really sorry she got hurt. How is her arm feeling? Can you still do the Shibari with her?”
“She has some pain, and I have to be much more aware of restricting blood flow for too long to that arm, but it’s good, actually. Really good. We’re figuring our way around it together,” he said, his brain resurrecting the scene they’d done earlier that night. He’d bound her legs in a wide kneeling position with the rope crisscrossing her thighs so beautifully, and then he’d run the knots up her belly, around her breasts, and to her arms, secured in a not-too-demanding position behind her back. Remembering how much she’d liked the Sybian scene they’d passed that night, he’d made her ride one, bent over, so he could take her from behind while she came on his cock again and again...
“Earth to Griffin, come in Griffin.” Quinton waved a hand in front of his face.
“Fucker,” Griffin muttered, but he was so busted. The other men laughed.
“It must also be said.” Quinton gave that trademark grin. “Her being a Marine? That’s fucking bad ass.” Kyler nodded.
Chuffing out a laugh, Griffin nodded and drained the last of his beer. “It is,” he said. “But she’s struggling. Because the bomb that took her arm killed her best friend and one other teammate, and then some bastard of a doctor told her that she owed her life to her friend taking the brunt of the impact. Can you fucking believe that?” Rage ran hot in his gut every time he thought about that, and about the devastation that had been in her eyes when she’d recounted the story.